The Prince's Tale
by AuroraQuaffle
Summary: An attempt to try and portray Severus Snape's story and his side of things. The story delves deeper into Severus' life and aims to follow his journey from a sullen child to well, the man he became (I haven't quite decide how far I attend to follow him.) The story begins with our earliest vision of Snape, at the playground.
1. The Unplanned Encounter

Okay guys, this is my first attempt at writing fanfiction so obviously I chose my favourite series of all time, Harry Potter.  
WARNING: For anyone that hasnt read all 7 books of harry potter, this story contains spoilers.  
As one of my favorite and in my opinion most well developed characters in the book, Severus Snape has held my attention ever since I found out about his hidden past (Wernt you shocked? omg) so this is my attempt to try and portray Snape's story and his side of things and also develop a deeper understanding of the character itself. Keep in mind that this version is a first draft and I may edit it further later on.  
I hope you enjoy it! Please leave your comments below and as always constructive criticism will be appreciated.

Chapter 1

The sun was bright and harsh as it beat down on Severus's back as he stood, half hidden behind the ferns. Squinting against the bright sunlight, he shifted shuffling his feet ever so slightly, careful not to make a sound lest the girls notice him. Crouching slightly on bended knee, to improve his vantage point Severus gazed out at the girls again, his eyes focused particularly on the younger of the two, the redhead. "Lily", she'd been called. _A fitting name _he mused, watching wide-eyed as she performed a small trick- getting a flower to open and close its petals- for the benefit of the other. _She has more magic in her than I'd realized. _, he thought surprised at how it made it him happy to acknowledge the fact. He wanted the girl to be magical, he realized, almost like a connection between the two of them. Severus' pleased expression seemed mirrored by Lily's own self satisfied smirk, delighted by her magic. The older girl however, Severus noted wryly, neither seemed to be enjoying the trick nor looked remotely pleased and was flapping her hands wildly trying to get Lily to stop it seemed. Severus watched angrily as shock and fear betrayed themselves in her expression as she admonished the little red head. _She's a muggle_ he thought dismissively, his mind briefly flitting back to his mother telling him, in one of her fits of anger, how muggles are dirty and stupid and the reason that magic had to be hidden, the reason that people eyed him strangely when he left home and the reason the man..the reason the man was the way he was.

Having been momentarily distracted, Severus' eyes flitted back to the two girls just in time for his gaze to follow the flower as Lily threw it to the ground. "How do you do it?" the older girl asked, seeming repulsed and fascinated in equal measures. _Stupid Muggle _Severus thought scathingly, not even realizing when his thoughts became spoken words. "Its obvious isn't it?" he said sounding infinitely superior as he jumped out from behind the foliage. In full view of the girls, Severus began to lose his nerve a little and shuffled his feet awkwardly; he hadn't planned it this way..This wasn't how it was supposed to be. More than slightly flustered, Severus scarcely registered Petunia's screech as she ran backward somewhere in the periphery of his vision, his eyes were only for Lily. "Whats obvious?" she asked, meeting his gaze. Despite being obviously startled she had held her ground, Severus noted, she still stood there talking to him, rather than running to join her sister. Taking heart from this Severus blurted out, "I know what you are."

His eyes were alight with excitement and all his careful plans lay forgotten, this was it- it was finally happening. "What do you mean?" Lily asked, softly as though sensing the importance of the answer that was to come. Leaning forward subconsciously, in a voice that betrayed all his excitement, Severus said, "You're.. You're a witch." Fully expecting Lily to mirror his delight and share in his excitement, Severus' eyes widened taken aback when her features contorted. He watched bemused as she yelled, "That's not a very nice thing to say to someone." and whirled away, joining her sister in an instant and fixing Severus with a disapproving glare. Desperate to right the situation Severus took an automatic step forward and cried out "No!" flicking a bead of sweat away from his forehead as he did, feeling uncomfortably hot in his oversized black coat.

As he approached the girls Severus bit his lip in anxiety, where to begin..how to explain so that she understood, when she knew nothing of his world, their world. "You are", he said lamely, pausing as though to let the words sink in, "You are a witch, I've been watching you for a while. But there's nothing wrong with that." He spoke the last sentence with a note of pleading in his voice, as though willing her to believe. "My mum's one, and I'm a wizard.", he added, with the faintest strain of pride in his voice despite the circumstance. Severus's black eyes bored incessantly into Lily's startlingly green ones as though hoping to convince her of his sincerity simply by forcing her to consider it for as long as possible. He was startled out of his reverie by a cold high laugh, coming from- he realized on turning his head reflexively- the other girl. "Wizard!", she spat at him scornfully, narrowing her eyes as she did, "I know who you are. You're that Snape boy! They live down Spinner's End by the river," she directed the last sentence to Lily, making it clear by her tone that the address was not something to be proud of. "Why have you been spying on us?" she said, turning to Severus with her nose in the air.

Severus felt himself to go hot around the ears, _Ofcourse she dint understand, she was nothing but a stupid muggle. What did she know of him? Of her own sister? Nothing. _"Havn't been spying.",he retorted, sneering back at her, "Wouldn't spy on you anyway, you're a muggle." Severus regretted saying the words almost as soon as they left his mouth, noticing for an instant how Lily's eyes tightened, he watched helplessly as she marched off after her sister, leaving him alone in the playground again.


	2. Spinner's End

Chapter 2

Severely disheartened, Severus walked over to a swing in the now abandoned playground and sat down on it, not bothering to swing back and forth but just sat suspended, remaining quite still, his gangly feet barely skimming the ground. It had all gone so horrible wrong, he thought miserable, how would he ever make this right?

After a few minutes of staring aimlessly into space, a non-descript object on the ground caught Severus' attention, causing him to snap out of his reverie. Jumping off the swing with a soft thud, in sudden inspiration Severus walked over to where the crumpled flower that Lily had tossed aside lay on the ground. Crouching to pick it up, Severus held the flower in his palm and examined it quietly, gently separating the crushed petals of the flower. In a fluid motion, he had pocketed it and strode toward the exit leaving the park. He set off once again, down the hill going back the way that he had come with this thin shoulder hunched and his head bowed against the wind as though carrying a burden too heavy for a ten years old's shoulders.

As he arrived at Spinner's End, Severus' thoughts briefly flitted back to the horse faced girl in the back, as she sneered at him while naming his address. "Spinner's End", she had cried derisively. Now as he looked around the all too familiar neighbourhood, his mouth pushing into a hard line Severus could see what she had meant. His mouth twisting almost imperceptibly in disgust at the pungent smell of the garbage piled up at the shore of the river, Severus acknowledged that Spinner's end was just the sort of dank and grimy place most people wouldn't want to set foot in after dark and his house, it seemed to him, was positioned in exactly the grimiest and dingiest place of all.

Loitering around the porch of the dilapidated brick house for a few minutes, Severus listened intently for any sounds that would indicate that they wernt done fighting yet. Hearing nothing but silence, Severus walked around the back of the house, on finding the backdoor unlocked, he entered through it and walked in to find the man asleep on a chair. Hoping to slink away quietly, Severus turned sideways and slid his skinny frame through the gap between the chair and the wall with scarcely an inch to spare. Just as he nearly made it through the crevice, Severus felt a hand brush the skin on the back of his neck before roughly grabbing his collar, "Where have you been?" the man asked softly, in a silken voice that made him sound like a snake poised to strike, more dangerous than if he had been yelling. His words framed a question while his tone conveyed a poorly veiled threat. Severus' eyes were wide with panic, "Let me go!" he yelled, his own voice displaying none of the silken finesse of man as he struggled wildly. Twisting one way first and then another in an attempt to slacken the man's grip on him, Severus did not realize when something small slipped out of his coat pocket and floated for a moment on catching the wind before landing softly on the floor. Severus did not immediately register what it was and thus was not expecting it when the man released him and bent down to pick whatever it was from off the floor, remaining instead briefly frozen in his struggle. An instant later however, Severus' eyes were wide with dread and comprehension and all struggle and instinct forgotten, he was on his hands and knees scrambling forward reaching toward the crumpled flower at the same time as the man, as though trying to block it from view.

Severus' scrawny arms however were no match for the man's own well muscled girth and were knocked out of the way easily by the man who now stood triumphant, the fragile flower clutched in his sweaty palm. "So this is what young Severus' gets up to during the day!" the man sneered, his greasy locks falling into his eyes which were alive with malice. "Collecting flowers!" he barked with a mirthless laugh, looking disgusted. "Tell me boy, do you think this makes your father proud? Tell me!" he added, leaning down so that he was an inch from Severus' face as he shouted the last two words. Severus flinched as flecks of the man's spit flew at him, but stood motionless, waiting for the man to lose interest and storm away as he knew he would, eventually.

Looking even more disgusted at the lack of response, the man straightened up to his full and considerable height and looked down at Severus' through the length of his hooked nose and spat at the floor, barely a few inches ahead of where Severus stood. Throwing the flower down at his feet, he stepped on it and began crushing it with his boot, sneering as he did, "No good piece of trash, just like his mother." At these words, Severus' deliberately stoic features contracted into a furious expression, more than a little reminiscent of the man before him. Without thinking or pausing to consider the size of the man before him, Severus' ran at the man and launched himself at him, punching and pummeling at every inch of the man that his tiny fists could reach. The only thought in his head was to cause the man immeasurable pain, as much as he was possibly capable of.

To his surprise and gratification, the man cried out and crumpled beneath him as though the weight of the scrawny boy was too much for him to bear. In between his screams however, Severus heard another voice, a woman's voice coming from the vague direction of the doorway, "What are you doing? What are you doing to him?! Stop it!" Half in shock, half obeying Severus obliging released the man and slid to the floor and turned to face his mother. He watched catatonically, his arms hanging limply by his sides as she ran to and knelt beside the man who lay still crumpled on the floor with his face hidden in hands as though in great pain. With a sudden great rasping sob that surprised even him, Severus scrambled stumbling and flailing over to the far end of the wall. He stood pressing his back and palms flat against the wall and edged along it, the expression that now reached his face reminiscent of a cornered animal.

Shutting his eyes and pressing them together tightly as though to make the images behind his eyelids disappear, Severus seemed to close in on himself as he reached the end of the wall. Sliding down to the floor and hunching, he crossed his scrawny arms across his chest and fit himself into the corner gap between two walls as though trying to make himself as insignificant as possible and fade away. His closed eyes however, couldn't block out the sounds that came to him. They couldn't prevent him from hearing the man's low groan as he recovered himself and rose from his place on the floor. They couldn't stop him from seeing the scene clearly from behind closed eyelids, as the man pointed at him and bellowed at his mother, "You see? You see what magic has done to him?!" His closed eyes did not muffle the sounds of the man cursing at him, nor the thud of his footsteps as he advanced toward Severus, yelling "Insolent, ungrateful little-", nor the scream as his mother jumped in the way, obstructing the man's path. "You dare..You dare point that thing at me? You dare use your magic against me as well- Goddamn wretch!" the man bellowed, sounding less and less human with every moment. Severus heard a screech before the sickening crunch of wood on bone and the crash that meant that his mother that has mother had been knocked on. He saw her, as clear as day, as she fell, her eyes closing in the brief instant before her head hit the ground. He saw her fall, again and again long after the sounds had ceased and there was only silence. He saw, though he did not want to see, as though the image was seared into the back of his eyelids. Severus slumped against the wall, began to sob, at first softly and then in great heaving rasps and then he screamed, a toneless, one-pitch scream that went on for what felt like forever, until eventually it subsided once again into soft, inconsequential sobs.


End file.
